[Fish Sandwich]

I'm a little surprised how upset I keep seeing people be about the rate at which Toei is extending Rider's reach to an English-speaking audience. The progress made just in this year alone already seems pretty insane to me if you step back and think about it. We went from little more than an out-of-print DVD of The First and two adaptations that failed to catch on to having two cornerstone series readily available online with extremely high quality translations, plus Heisei Generations Forever, which debuted with a reasonably publicized livestream where Woz thanked everyone for being fans.

The comparisons keep getting made to how Tsuburaya is handling Ultraman, but all that reminds me of is the position they were in back before Ginga was on the air, and how gradually they worked themselves back up to the point we're now at with Z being a bona fide hit in Japan that also made fans across the globe. I feel pretty good about the momentum that's been building with Rider lately.

I've been hesitant to jump in on this conversation, though, because it's hard to put my thoughts in a way that doesn't sound like I'm scolding everyone for not accepting their table scraps, which isn't my intent. It's downright valuable that everyone is loudly eager to see more! That's how change happens, and I swear I get that!

The biggest gripe I have right now has less to do with the selection (I have deep fear of official subs being rushed and terrible; see "Honshin!"), and everything to do with the region exclusivity. And I'm not even directly affected by it! But getting the shows that are already out there to even more people definitely seems like it would be both an easy and effective way to keep building an audience. That's priority number one to me. It really hurts the sense of community fun to see people who are part of all these circles have to put a big asterisk on their excitement for these developments that they still have to take a page from the Gokaigers anyway, you know?